From “Endemically Pro‐Israel” to Unsympathetic: Australia's Middle East Policy, 1967–1972

The hardening of Australian Middle East policy toward Israel in the early 1970s is often attributed to the election of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister. Whitlam's December 1972 victory may well have opened a new, problematic chapter. But the evidence suggests that a deterioration in Australia‐Israel relations occurred gradually in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. This deterioration reflected changes in Australia's political leadership and change at the top of the Department of External Affairs (renamed Foreign Affairs in 1970). Individual decision‐makers such as Whitlam did play a significant role in determining Australian Middle East policy. As Prime Minister, Sir John Gorton was willing to put aside advice from External Affairs not to antagonise and risk disrupting trade relations with Arab states, and to offer heartfelt support for Israel. His successor Sir William McMahon vacillated under opposing influences of a department determined to secure Australia's trade interests on the one hand, and Australian Jewish leaders and Israel's envoys in Australia on the other. With the support of the Australian Jewish community, Israel sought to influence Australian political leaders — especially within the ALP — from turning away from Israel.     

Endorsing Annexation? The Whitlam Government's De Jure Recognition of the Soviet Baltic States

In August 1974, the Australian Labor Party Government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced it had recognised the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union de jure. Historical writing around this diplomatic recognition is scarce and sheds little light on why the policy was enacted. Using previously unavailable archival evidence, as well as other sources including testimony from Government and public service workers, this article demonstrates that the recognition was induced primarily by Whitlam, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and Sir James Plimsoll, Australia's ambassador to the Soviet Union. These actors were motivated by varying considerations. These included an adherence to realist foreign policy principles, concerns regarding Australian–Soviet bi-lateral relations, convictions around the legitimacy of Baltic self-determination, and ethnic prejudice against Australians of Baltic descent.     

Robert Manne's Wilfred Burchett: The Uses and Abuses of Biography

Robert Manne numbers amongst Australia's most influential public intellectuals. Though his politics have moved leftwards, Manne remains critical of the left's so‐called neo‐Stalinist interpretation of Cold War history. Of particular concern is the left's defence of the radical Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who was widely regarded as a communist propagandist and traitor. Manne's 1985 Quadrant essay, “The Fortunes of Wilfred Burchett: A New Assessment”, lent considerable academic weight to this view. Though Manne has since acknowledged some errors, he still maintains that Burchett was a communist “hack” and traitor. But Manne's argument remains selectively based and erroneous. It uncritically accepts security‐based intelligence, while sidestepping the abuse of Burchett's civil liberties by Liberal governments. Manne uses and abuses Burchett's life to push his ideological agenda about Stalinism's evils.     

Secret Intelligence And Escape Clauses: Australia and the Indonesian Annexation of East Timor, 1963-76

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a “genuine act of self-determination” by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, “escape clause,” if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear.     

“Bordering on Treason”? Sir Raphael Cilento and Pre‐Second World War Fascism in Australia

Sir Raphael Cilento died on 16 April 1985 at the age of ninety‐two. The notice in the Canberra Times spoke of Cilento's “worldwide” reputation in tropical medicine, his contribution to the public health service in Queensland, and his role with the United Nations in the immediate post‐war years. In short, he was an “eminent son of Australia”. But Sir Raphael Cilento's halo has been tarnished by his persistent eugenicist beliefs and his later association with the anti‐Semitic League of Rights. There were also lingering allegations and rumours about his apparent pre‐war association with Fascism. Without the evidentiary “smoking gun”, this association has occasionally been alluded to by scholars but never fully examined. Drawing on an unreleased, previously classified security file, this article addresses this question in Cilento's life. Through an examination of what the security service and military intelligence knew of Cilento's activities, the article argues that Cilento was at best an active fellow traveller and at worst a card‐carrying Fascist who narrowly escaped internment.     

Crossing the Line: Richard Casey Re‐Visited

Sir John Kerr's dismissal of the Whitlam government ensured that he became Australia's most controversial Governor‐General and the one seen to have taken vice‐regal powers to their limit. While this is understandable, Kerr's notoriety has obscured a wider appreciation of the significant activism and even intrusiveness which characterised Richard Casey's 1965–1969 term as Governor‐General. This article draws on Casey's extensive diaries to paint a broader picture of the man and to examine his activist view of the role. Casey's version of the vice‐regal role is almost certainly at the extreme end of any Australian vice‐regal activity spectrum, and is consistent with patterns in his overall career.     

Edward Gough Whitlam, 1916–2014: An Assessment of His Political Significance

Gough Whitlam’s political significance lies in the first instance in his leading the Australian Labor Party into office at federal level in December 1972 after 23 years in opposition. As prime minister he instituted wide-ranging domestic reforms expanding the involvement of the Commonwealth government into many areas affecting the lives of ordinary Australians. He faced a declining economic situation and a parliamentary opposition determined to impede his reforms; the blocking of supply in the Senate culminated in Whitlam’s dismissal by the governor-general on 11 November 1975. In foreign policy, Whitlam repositioned Australia as an active middle power. His opening to China coincided with the Sino-American normalisation, leading to a new direction in Australian foreign policy that gained momentum in subsequent years; the fundamentals of the Australian relationship with the United States remained intact. Whitlam was motivated by a vision of ‘positive equality’ in government services as the basis of social democracy. From a contemporary perspective there is less faith in the efficacy of government action than was the case with Whitlam. His government bears comparison with the great reform governments in the Australian Labor tradition, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, and even the United States.     

The Evolution of Malcolm Fraser's China Policy

This article explores the evolution of Malcolm Fraser's views on China. While Gough Whitlam is fondly remembered as a trailblazer for normalizing Australia‐China relations, Fraser was a pioneer in rendering a sense of bipartisanship in Australia's China policy. Fraser was not initially a Sino‐enthusiast, however. He came from a background of staunch anti‐Communism and throughout the 1950s and 1960s believed that China posed a major threat to stability in the Asia‐Pacific. The Liberal Party fiercely opposed the Whitlam government's decision to normalise diplomatic relations with China in 1972. Following the Whitlam dismissal in 1975, Fraser became Prime Minister and, in what seemed to be an abrupt departure from the Liberal Party's position, thoroughly embraced relations with China. As Leader of the Opposition, Whitlam called out the hypocrisy of the Liberal Party's radical policy shift. This study examines the domestic and international dynamics that shaped Fraser's views on China and ultimate adoption of a successful China policy. This is the untold story of a crucial turning point in Australia‐China relations under the leadership of a conservative government, in which a strong relationship with China became a cornerstone of bipartisan Australian foreign policy.     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

“A Good‐Will Ship”: The Light Cruiser Köln Visits Rabaul (1933)

The concept of loyalty still holds a central space in many histories about New Guinean‐Australian relations, especially during the Second World War, and translates into demands by Australians that New Guineans recognize Australia's political system as “the best”. In this article about the visit of the first German navy cruiser to New Guinea after the First World War, I tell a story not about loyalties, but about contesting colonial claims, namely Australia's insistence on “loyalty”, and Germany's demand for a “return” of her colony. The visit of Köln in 1933 raises questions such as: How did Germans and Australians negotiate living together in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea? How were divisions, grief, tensions, and hostilities after the First World War dealt with? What separated them, what united them, and what role did New Guineans play in this complex relationship?     

The Japanese worker

Abstract

Robert Cole points out in his introduction to Japanese Blue Collar that there are two dominant but conflicting views of the social relations of production in the Japanese economy, views which Cole conveniently sums up under the rubrics of “uniqueness” and “convergence.”     

Parliament on “the Wireless” in Australia

Australia's parliament allowed the radio broadcast of proceedings in 1946, a decade after New Zealand, but well before the “Mother of all Parliaments” in 1978. In keeping with Australia's reputation as a pioneering democracy, early interest in broadcasting parliamentary debates can be traced to the 1920s. In the formative years of “wireless” it was imagined radio might close the gap between parliaments and the public. Proceedings of the New South Wales parliament were actually broadcast for several weeks during 1932 (and before the New Zealand parliament institutionalised this practice). Tasmania experimented with parliamentary broadcasting in 1934. Australia's embrace of parliamentary broadcasting in 1946 was less carefully planned than has been suggested. It was an opportunistic, caucus‐initiated Chifley government measure driven by a long‐held ALP concern about newspaper bias. It was however generally justified as reform to bring the people to their Parliament and, remarkably, did have bipartisan support.     

State vs Federal Government in the “Barmaids” Case: Regulating Australia's Second World War Home Front

Australia's National Security Act of 1939 authorised the federal government to make emergency regulations “for securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth [of Australia]”. Further, it instructed the government to decide for itself what might be “necessary or convenient” for the “more effectual prosecution of the present war”. 1 This article examines the authorisation of the civilian leadership through one set of emergency regulations, the National Security (Women's Employment) Regulations, and analyses their functioning through one operational decision, the decision to permit women to serve in South Australian hotel bars with the intention of releasing male bar workers for essential industrial or military employment. Managing the home front proved complex. Sectional interests continued to jockey for positions of influence, even in war conditions. In this case, the state of South Australia sought to protect its “rights” against federal control of employment: a contest fuelled by an ideological squabble about what were then known as “barmaids”. I argue that Australia's centrally‐determined national war goals were undermined by its federal sovereignty‐distribution mechanism, which allowed sub‐national elements such as South Australia to impede national policy, and conclude that even with extensive defence powers to draw on, the federal government's war goals were obstructed by non‐war interests.     

Never Say Never: Considerations about the Possibility of Australia Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Australia's decision to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and forego the acquisition of nuclear weapons was taken on medium-term strategic grounds. While similar circumstances prevail today, it is possible to identify three conditions for the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Australia to be a credible option: the existence of a major threat to Australia; a loss of confidence in US guarantees; and allied acquiescence to an Australian nuclear program. These conditions interact with Australia's relationship with Indonesia and the technological and industrial feasibility of “tactical” and “strategic” nuclear weapons postures, respectively. The only Australian nuclear posture that does not lack credibility in light of all these factors is the use of “tactical” weapons to deter major landings on the Australian mainland.     

Gillard,Rudd and Labor Tradition*

Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister and Labor leader in June 2010. She describes her government as being firmly in the “tradition of Labor”. To locate it in the broad ideological continuum of Labor governments, and to test the suggestion that she is travelling a reform path set largely by the Hawke and Keating governments, I analyse the positions taken by Rudd and Gillard on a range of issues, beginning with economic policy. On social issues Gillard has been even more cautious than Rudd and this reflects her analysis of the electoral impact of Howard's Culture Wars. Her focus on educational opportunity suggests she is the logical successor to Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. As Labor leaders, Rudd and Gillard each embraced market‐reliant policy positions. Rudd even claimed to be an “fiscal conservative”. However, with Rudd venturing a critique of neo‐liberalism, it is Gillard whose stance is closer to Hawke and Keating's “economic rationalism”. Indeed Gillard's insistence upon the centrality of markets leaves Labor with a dilemma: if there are no significant problems with relying on markets then why does Australia need a social democratic party?     

Australian Reporting of the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66: The Media as the “First Rough Draft of History”

This article examines Australian press coverage of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66, and considers its legacy for the historical consciousness of events in Indonesia. The Indonesian killings of 1965–66 occurred on Australia's doorstep, at a time when the Cold War dominated the front pages of Australian newspapers. By examining articles from one of Australia's leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, we show that press coverage of the killings was both limited and distorted. Comments made by correspondents reporting from Indonesia at the time suggest reasons why this was the case. In the rush to write a “first rough draft of history”, the killings in Indonesia were treated as background to the story of leadership change in Jakarta and the defeat of Communism.     

Noel Pearson's Role in the Northern Territory Intervention: Radical Centrist or Polarising Partisan?

Noel Pearson is one of Australia's most prominent and influential Aboriginal intellectuals. This article examines a major idea in his writing: the “quest for a radical centre”. Through the concept of the radical centre, Pearson articulates both his desire to transcend existing policy paradigms and an ethics of partisanship which emphasizes the importance of listening to and negotiating with one's political adversaries. Pearson's development of this concept is explored in light of the role Pearson has played as leading advocate for Indigenous welfare reform, and especially his pivotal contribution to the public debate over the introduction of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Intervention by the Howard government in 2007.     

“Making the Crooked Straight”: China's Grand Strategy of “Peaceful Rise” and its Central Asian Dimension

Abstract

This article argues that China's foreign policy since 1991 has been guided by the evolution of a grand strategy of “peaceful rise” that seeks to ensure China's smooth transition to great power status. Moreover, it suggests that a strategic preoccupation with Central Asia has become an important expression of this grand strategy. Framing these arguments is a third overarching one that postulates that China's foreign policy in Central Asia is not only intimately related to the strategy of “peaceful rise” but also to a particular, historically and geopolitically informed narrative of China's “Inner Asian” power.     

China's industrial revolution: Politics,planning and management, 1949 to the present,by Stephen Andors

Abstract

The study of Chinese industrial development has come a long way since the 1969 publication of Barry Richman's Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969). Richman recognized that China had begun to “organize conscientiously and vigorously for industrial progress since the beginning of the 1950's.” Unlike some of his predecessors, he did not explain China's industrial growth in terms of mass coercion or swarms of “blue ants” instead, he warned the reader that “in order to understand more fully how Chinese management and Chinese organization function, it is essential to have an understanding of Chinese ideology.” His examples of the use of ideology-e.g., the study of Mao's On Contradiction to help resolve a problem of cost vs. quality in bicycle production-were refreshingly concrete and useful.     

“Men who smell of fear”: The Menzies Government and Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence

This article uses international archival sources to examine Australian policy on the problem of Rhodesian independence during the 1960s. It demonstrates that until November 1965 the Australian government led by Sir Robert Menzies followed a finely balanced policy that was broadly supportive of Britain but also sympathetic to the Rhodesian Front. However, the Australian response to Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) revealed increasing bureaucratic conflict in Australian policy‐making and exposed the limits of Australian support for Britain in dealing with the international consequences of the UDI. Analysis of Australia's decision to not attend the Lagos Conference in January 1966 demonstrates the Menzies government's anxiety about the implications of racial issues for Australian domestic and foreign policies. This suggests that historians should pay more attention to the significance of Africa in Australian foreign relations during the Menzies era.